[Sidenote: Miracle plays, their character.] The miracle play was originally introduced by the Church, the first dramas of the kind, it is said, having been composed by Gregory Nazianzen. They were brought from Constantinople by the Crusaders; the Byzantines were always infatuated with theatrical shows. The parts of these plays were often enacted by ecclesiastics, and not unfrequently the representations took place at the abbey gate. So highly did the Italian authorities prize the influence of these exhibitions on the vulgar, that the pope granted a thousand days of pardon to any person who should submit to the pleasant penance of attending them. All the arguments that had been used in behalf of picture-worship were applicable to these plays; even the Passion, Resurrection, and Ascension were represented. Over illiterate minds a coarse but congenial influence was obtained; a recollection, though not an understanding of sacred things. In the play of "the Fall of Lucifer," that personage was introduced, according to the vulgar acceptation, with horns, and tail, and cloven hoof; his beard, however, was red, our forefathers having apparently indulged in a singular antipathy against hair of that colour. There still remain accounts of the expenses incurred on some of these occasions, the coarse quaintness of which is not only amusing, but also shows the debased ideas of the times. For instance, in "Mysteries," enacted at Coventry, are such entries as "paid for a pair of gloves for God;" "paid for gilding God's coat;" "dyvers necessaries for the trimmynge of the Father of Heaven." In the play of the "Shepherds" there is provision for green cheese and Halton ale, a suitable recruitment after their long journey to the birthplace of our Saviour. "Payd to the players for rehearsal: imprimis, to God, ii_s._ viii_d._; to Pilate his wife, ii_s._; item, for keeping fyer at hell's mouth, iii_d._" A strict attention to chronology is not exacted; Herod swears by Mohammed, and promises one of his councillors to make him pope. Noah's wife, who, it appears, was a termagant, swears by the Virgin Mary that she will not go into the ark, and, indeed, is only constrained so to do by a sound cudgelling administered by the patriarch, the rustic justice of the audience being particularly directed to the point that such a flogging should not be given with a stick thicker than her husband's thumb. The sentiment of modesty seems not to have been very exacting, since in the play of "the Fall of Man" Adam and Eve appear entirely naked; one of the chief incidents is the adjustment of the fig-leaves. Many such circumstances might be related, impressing us perhaps with an idea of the obscenity and profanity of the times. But this would scarcely be a just conclusion. As the social state improved, we begin to find objections raised by the more thoughtful ecclesiastics, who refused to lend the holy vestments for such purposes,